Your Right to Know

Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoKYLE ROBERTSON | DispatchA skill-games parlor was operating in Jeffersonville, Ohio, in 2007, months before a state ban on cash payouts and a limit on noncash prizes. Media reports say new parlors in northeastern Ohio are making cash payouts.

Like the arcade game Whac-A-Mole, skill games just won’t go away. Closed down in one place, they
pop up somewhere else.

Skill games, which operate like slot machines, were essentially put out of business in Ohio in
2007, but they soon resurfaced as Internet cafes. When state lawmakers closed the door on Internet
cafes last year, the storefront operations began reopening as skill games and in some cases are
paying cash prizes, which is illegal under state law.

“At the end of the day, illegal gambling is very lucrative,” said Matt Schuler, executive
director of the Ohio Casino Control Commission. “It’s apparent that there are individuals in this
state who are not willing to give up that illegal income easily.”

The commission technically is empowered by Ohio Revised Code Chapter 3772 to enforce regulations
for skill games, but the one-sentence reference in state law has no teeth. Skill games are defined
in detail elsewhere in state law but without spelling out enforcement authority.

Schuler said he plans to talk to members of the Joint Committee on Gaming and Wagering, a panel
of members of the state House and Senate, about expanding the commission’s legal authority over
skill games.

Attorney General Mike DeWine’s office also is keeping a wary eye on the establishments.

“We have received complaints about ‘sweepstakes’ that have opened as ‘skill games,’ ” DeWine
spokeswoman Lisa Hackley said. “We are aware of the situation but cannot comment on any potential
investigations or enforcement actions.”

Hackley said no Internet-sweepstakes cafes have registered as required by House Bill 7, the
state law passed last year to crack down on Internet cafes. “We have not received information that
anyone is operating as an Internet sweepstakes as regulated by HB 7.”

The commission’s Schuler said: “We have seen places on the attorney general’s (Internet cafe)
list rebranding themselves as skill-game establishments.”

He also cited media reports of skill-games parlors opening in the Akron suburbs of Norton and
Barberton and elsewhere in northeastern Ohio that are making cash payouts. Schuler said skill games
are supposed to be limited to rewarding winners with $10 gasoline and gift cards.

Skill games with names such as Tic Tac Fruit and BlackJack 21 emerged across the state in the
early 2000s and were soon widespread in bars and storefronts. Then-Attorney General Marc Dann tried
to regulate skill-games parlors but abandoned the idea.

Then-Gov. Ted Strickland stepped in by issuing an executive order banning all cash payouts by
skill games and limiting noncash prizes to $10 in value. The legislature voted those provisions
into law in October 2007.

The Ohio Supreme Court upheld the limits in a challenge filed by the owner of a Pickaway County
skill-games parlor.